


In Auerbach Theatrical Agency, the Hunted Hunt You

by sheron



Series: Reconstruction [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: BAMF Rose Roberts, Fluff, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Season/Series 02 Finale, Robbery gone wrong, Teamwork, secret agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 01:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6451006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron/pseuds/sheron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Thompson and Rose Roberts are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is that exactly the right place?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Auerbach Theatrical Agency, the Hunted Hunt You

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of fluff set in the earlier days of Jack's recovery in L.A. You don't need to have read the other stories in this series to understand this one.

Agent Rose Roberts was offering Jack cookies when it happened.

They'd been having a morning chat after Jack showed up at the Auerbach Theatrical Agency, indenting to go upstairs to see Daniel, and got distracted by the smell of home-baked cooking. He'd sidled up, glancing at the tray laid out so invitingly, and leaned against the corner of the desk, half-sitting on the desk and setting his cane against it, waiting to be invited for a taste. Oatmeal, his favourite.

Sensing his intentions, Rose motioned with a hand.

It seemed polite to inquire after her health before he pounced. His question she waved off with a dismissive shrug, setting one hand to her temple, looking pained.

Jack's fingers paused over a cookie. "Roberts, you seem like you need a vacation."

She leveled him a flat stare. "I'd take one, if people would stop getting shot on my days off."

Jack lifted his hands up, signaling peace. He got so much flack for that little incident, unbelievable.

That's why Jack already had his hands up in the air when a short young guy in a worker's cap broke inside their agency and slammed the door behind him, before leveling a gun in their faces.

"Freeze!" He shouted. Outside there was a distant sound of sirens.

"Are you the police?" The words dropped out of Jack's mouth before he could stop them.

"No, I'm your fucking God. Don't move!" the boy shouted again. He had a screechy voice. "You make one move, I'll brow your brains out."

Contrary to his speech, the boy ― he couldn't be more than twenty ― looked out the blinds on the door, spreading them apart with his fingers. Jack could now hear the noise of a police siren approaching on a chase, and exchanged a glance with Rose. They could have tried to disarm him right here, while he was distracted, but there was a chance the gun would go off and hit something by accident. Jack didn't particularly want to end up in the hospital again, after he'd just made it out the first time. He still carried a cane with him and got tired too easily, but he was making a recovery and this street punk wasn't going to jeopardize that.

"You," the boy finally turned back to them, ignoring the police cars that went by the street without slowing, no idea that their suspect was inside one of the buildings they had passed, "Hands in the air."

Rose slowly lifted her hands up off the desk. Jack knew she had an electroshock weapon in her desk-drawer, invented by Howard Stark and surprisingly effective at immobilizing their suspects without injuring them. If she'd had a chance to grab for it, the boy would have saved himself more trouble. Now they had to disable him via conventional means.

Jack kept his hands in the air as he slid off Rose's desk.

"What's your name?"

"None of your business," he said. "You got any cash here?" he glanced about, his expression sliding from covetous to distaste. The entrance of their agency didn't look like a prime location to rob, the drapery was faded and the desk that Rose stood behind was scuffed up. The boy couldn't know that the scuffs came from all the previous miscreants that Rose had disabled single-handedly. Granted, none of those desperate actors had had a gun.

The gun was real, that much Jack was sure of. The intruder himself, now that Jack could study him better, was at most seventeen. Still in grade school when the War broke out, then. Jack couldn't remember being that young.

"Alright, Bob. Can I call you Bob?"

"Shut up! The fuck is wrong with you people? Don't you get that I'm gonna _kill you_ if you keep pissing me off?!" No doubt, he saw only a secretary and a guy who needed a cane to walk.

"Chief Thompson," Rose said cautioning him against mouthing off too much. Jack smiled at her, unconcerned.

He liked how she still called him Chief even if he was off active duty for the foreseeable future. Peggy and Daniel already treated him like he reported to them instead of the other way around. Hearing the words "Chief" directed at him was a good reminder of how things really stood. 

While Rose pushed away from her desk, movements slow and careful as they each tried to move away from each other, to give the boy a harder time aiming, Jack made a casual step back. Bob was green enough that he didn't notice, still glancing outside with a nervous tic of a gesture, looking for cops. He was like fowl that had escaped the chase of a wolf by hiding in the jaws of a crocodile.

"Bob," Jack continued, "I don't think you realize what a mistake you made by choosing this particular Agency." He was now firmly positioned in front of the boy, with Rose in his blind spot. The gun pointed in his face shook as the boy's face flushed with anger, but he forgot to keep his eye on the both of them, discarding the secretary as unimportant.

"Why's that? What? You're gonna stop me?" He sneered. "You're gonna call the police here?"

"Afterward," Jack said and smiled wider at the confused look that crossed the boy's face.

"Don't even think about it!" Bob said, the gun moving erratically in his hand. "If you try to call for help I'll shoot you both!"

"Why would we do that?" Jack blinked.

"Huh?"

"Why would we call for help?"

"Are you _mocking_ me?" His pitch rose in irritation.

"A little bit, yeah." Jack glanced at Rose for confirmation.

She nodded, "He is, a little." The boy glanced between them, now having to move his head to look at Rose. His gun stayed pointed at Jack though, and that's all they needed. Behind him, Rose frowned, "Chief Thompson, if you get yourself shot being a smart-mouth, you'll be the one to explain that to Chief Sousa."

"Noted," Jack said with a tight little grin. He lowered his hands and crossed them on his chest.

The boy didn't like that. He lifted the gun to aim directly at Jack's left eye. "I'll end you," it was a growl. All bark and bluster, but Jack had seen the sweat on his brow. It was just talk.

"That'll definitely bring the police down here," Jack reasoned. "Plus, if you are going to shoot, it's better to aim for the chest. Harder to miss." He made a little scratch on the lapel of the jacket over the right-side of his chest, where he had a scar.

Rose scowled at him from behind the boy.

Jack said to her, "I'm just trying to help him out. He seems so new at this."

"Oh, and you know something about guns?" The worst part was Bob looked curious despite himself. Jack almost felt sorry for him, except that the boy stood between him and Rose's home-made cookies. 

"Might do."

"Props don't count, you pansy-assed actor. This piece's real."

"Oh, I don't doubt that." Jack said. "But trouble is..." he held his voice dramatically for a moment, then nodded behind Bob, "That one's real too."

The boy froze when he felt the barrel of a sawed-off to his neck. He swallowed.

"I can blow your head into so many pieces they'll never find them all," Rose growled close to his ear. In the time Jack had distracted their gunman, she'd managed to sidle closer to the curtains by the door, where out of the view of any passersby had lain her favourite weapon.

"Obviously―" Jack took a step closer, grabbing the gun out of the boy's unresisting frozen hand, fast as lightning; the boy's mouth dropped open. "We'd like to avoid that mess." He watched the guy track the piece as Jack set it down on the table, the barrel away from them. Watched his eyes widen as Jack pulled his own piece out of his holster, thus far hidden by the well-tailored lines of Jack's suit. "Want me to do the honors?"

"Yes, please." Rose said. She didn't take her eyes off the boy, or her finger off the trigger. Bob's eyes almost grew comically wide. Christ, Jack thought, assessing the scene and the serious expression on Rose's face, she really would blow him away if the poor bastard made a move.

Jack hurried to the phones, dialing the well-memorized number for the police. In lazy tones he let them know their suspect had been apprehended and the address of their agency. Once Jack put the receiver on the hook, the three of them waited in silence for several beats. Evidently, Bob was still processing the change in the tableau and how he'd been thoroughly wrong to enter this particular building today.

At the sound of the sirens echoing from far away, the boy made an aborted movement, but thankfully Rose had the presence of mind not to shoot. She hit him in the temple with the barrel of her shotgun instead. 

Jack and Rose watched as he crumpled at their feet and didn't move.

"Well," Rose said, leaning the shotgun against her shoulder, her voice full of irony, "I better look the part of a terrified secretary of the Auerbach Theatrical Agency before the police gets here." She went to hide the shotgun. If Jack was not mistaken, he'd heard a bit of a catch in her voice for all the wry humour in it.

It made sense that Jack would take the credit for everything. More plausible that a man had somehow disabled the intruder. It would certainly raise fewer questions from the police than having a plump secretary of a Theatrical agency handle a shotgun with such confidence and ease. They didn't want any questions, not about their workplace. Rose gave every indication that she wouldn't raise a fuss and the truth was subjective in any case. Jack could have easily disabled the man on his own, instead of playing the part of the designated victim for their little act.

He watched Rose settle back behind her counter, rotating her right wrist, no doubt a bit sore from where she'd clocked the man. Jack had felt that ache in his own hands more times than he could count. 

Screw their cover; he made up his mind. He didn't want to be that guy anymore.

"Looks like you've got everything under control." 

Rose glanced at him in surprise. 

Jack nodded at her, even as the sirens grew stronger. The police would be here in moments, looking for who had captured the man they'd been pursuing. "I'll go on upstairs; they're waiting for me." He tilted his head towards the cabinets, where he would disappear into the inner offices of the SSR.

She looked down at the gunman, still prostrate and unconscious on the floor, then back at him. 

Jack winked.

He had already turned to go before he paused. "Oh, and Roberts?"

"Yes, Chief?" She said, her voice still bewildered at this turnabout, but her lips starting a tentative smile of hope.

He tipped his hat. "Call me Jack."

There are some things that you can't go through without ending up on first-name basis, and being held at gunpoint was one of them.

On the way out, he snagged an oatmeal cookie from the tray.

 

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> The original quote by J.K. Rowling was: “There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”
> 
> Thanks for reading. Your comments or kudos are appreciated!


End file.
